SEAMY SIDE OF LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14648, 6 April 1911, Page 6

SEAMY SIDE OF LIFE.

SOME SORDID PHASES. GRATIFICATION OF SELF. [BY TELEGBAPH.— OORBEBPONDENT.] CimiSTcmrECH, Wednesday. The sordid details of wrecked lives come regularly before the committee of the North Canterbury Charitable Aid Board, but the number 'and nature of the cases dealt with at, the last meeting of the committee, for intensity of human misery and degradation really surpassed anything that had gone before. Perhaps the most tragic case of all was that of a girl of 17 years who had been married for two years. She had one child and was about to become the mother of another. Her husband was in gaol serving an eight years' sentence on two charges of indecent assault. Mr. W. W. Tanner, a member of the committee, in speaking to a reporter, said: —" In spite of the spread-eagle talk of Dr. 'Findlay, when we come to "deal practically with cases we find that our powers are singularly limited. We can give relief, and we can continue that for ever, but we have precious little power outside of that. I hardly know what powers could be given, but with regard to a number of these people powers of detention should be given. A patient may enter the sanatorium for consumptives, and may cost some £30 or £40 while there, yet if he . chooses to feel disastisfied with his position, there is nothing to prevent him going away; he cannot be brought back by any power we possess." The same remarks, Mr. Tanner said, apply to patients in the hospitals, and he gave a striking case. A fine-looking young man, a consumptive patient, was an inmate of the sanatorium for a long period, and was finally discharged uncured. He was then placed in the general hospital and regarded as an incurable. A young lady was madly infatuated with him, but his friends were anxious that he should remain in the hospital in order to keep them apart. Whether he became acquainted with their object or not, I don't know, but at any rate he left the hospital without discharge, married the young lady, and went off to a different part of the Dominion. "I can thoroughly appreciate the statement made by, a speaker at Auckland a few days ago," added Mr. Tanner, "that there is a tendency in the present generation to regard life entirely from a materialistic point of view. The more one sees of life and of the more sordid phases of life, such as we on the Charitable Aid Board see every day, the more one finds out that selfiish gratification is the dominating influence with most people, and that everything else is treated with callous indifference."